Boon Nam Pha, a service for organizing merit-making events at home, sharing 7 years of experience. Restaurants that want to organize catering events must read!

'Boon Nam Pha' is considered a leading provider of catering services in Thailand. With the number of events held as high as 300 per month last year, which resulted in a value in the tens of millions per month, they have now upgraded their services to One Stop Service Catering along with expanding their service line to include Mr. Chon frozen ready-to-eat meals and most recently opened an office space as a restaurant so that customers can stop by and try the food first. The important thing that has made merit and led to standing strong into its 7th year comes from planning and creating a strong system, so let's go behind the scenes of building Khun Golf's business. - Sarasit Netnil, the founder of Boonnumpa, has continuously grown and developed the service.

How did you get the idea for Boon Nam Pha from the beginning, Khun Golf?

: Going back 7 years ago, I went to a friend's housewarming party. During the merit-making ceremony, my friend complained the whole time that it was chaotic and that he didn't know what to prepare. He wasted quite a bit of time doing these things. Since he was working, he didn't have much time to prepare for the housewarming ceremony.

When I saw him complain like this, I had an idea that if we accept to organize house blessing ceremonies or office blessing ceremonies for other people, it would be good. It's convenient, fast, and we can invite people to make merit more quickly. From the initial idea, we studied information about all the methods of organizing merit-making ceremonies, how to do it, what is needed, by studying with monks about what to prepare, one of which was food. Seven years ago, we hired someone else to do catering, like we were the organizers. That's how it started.

So how did you come to expand and take over the catering business? Mr. Golf : Catering is a problem that we have solved. When we continue to organize merit-making events, the thing that we cannot control is the food. We cannot control the quality and service of the staff. There are feedbacks from customers that the food is not delicious and the service is not good. They do not remember that we used someone else, but remember that merit brought the food to not be delicious. When the problem occurred, we set up our own catering. I am someone who likes to cook, so I experimented to see how much to prepare for 10, 100, or 1,000 people. The catering did not increase by 10 times. It increased in scale. We have learned and collected data for 7 years to know how much to prepare for this menu for 1,000 people. Now, we can make a system that knows how much to prepare with just one click because the data is stored in the cloud system. This is the starting point of making merit to bring.

Who is Boonnumpa's target group? Mr. Golf

: We set our target group by searching for information, looking at how many new houses are built each year and how many offices there are. Currently, companies and houses account for half, but we focus on corporate customers because they are more likely to be re-ordered.

What are the outstanding services of Boonnumpa at present? Mr. Golf

: At present, Boonnumpa offers event organizing services, whether it be house blessing ceremonies, company blessing ceremonies, setting up a shrine, or religious ceremonies, etc. Catering services are available for both merit-making ceremonies, banquets, and food stalls. We have a central kitchen that can serve about 2,000 people per day. Restaurant: Since some people who are organizing events would like to taste the food, we have divided up space within the office so that customers can come and taste the food first. We have only been open for about 2 months.

Frozen ready-to-eat food for customers who are coffee shops, cafes, and non-chef academies. For those doing restaurant and catering business, it is expected to be ready to open by the end of this year. All services come from all the data that we have collected and are gradually developing.

Doing business without a storefront, what are the advantages and differences? Mr. Golf

: There are both advantages and disadvantages. Boonnumpa is a business without a storefront, which means that there will be orders in advance. I don’t have to stock a lot of products. But if it’s a general restaurant, they will have to stock products because they don’t know how many people will come in. This is different. The next point is that if it’s a restaurant with a storefront, it may create more credibility for customers than a restaurant without a storefront because customers can come to the restaurant directly. As a result, Boonnumpa will have customers asking if they can come and try the food. So we have to set up an office for customers to come and try the food, just like a storefront. Is having a storefront good? It’s good in terms of credibility and identity. But the disadvantage is that you have to manage the stock well to prevent the ingredients from being damaged. We have a management method where we do catering in the morning. Therefore, the ingredients for the restaurant in the evening will be turned over to the catering the next morning. I think that if someone has a restaurant and also does catering, they have to do it like me. Otherwise, they will have different ingredients. But the back-end system, such as accounting, data collection, or dividing the numbers of what is the cost of the restaurant and what is the cost of the catering, must be planned with the accounting department. Otherwise, the numbers will be tangled and it will be impossible to tell which unit it belongs to.

When there is no storefront, how do you promote and market yourself, Mr. Golf?

: Initially, in online marketing, we do not only do online marketing. We also do offline marketing. In online marketing, do customers really come online? We have our own techniques for collecting data and analyzing it because we have our own Marketing Analysis to collect all customer data and channels of entry, such as where they come from, whether they are real or not. Facebook can do this by using certain keys. LINE OA can do this by creating hashtags and setting up groups, which allows us to separate customers into ABC grades, how old customers come back to use the service? All of this is our Customer Data. As for credibility, it means building a brand so that customers know who we are and how to build credibility. Before COVID-19, we organized tours and travel activities to maintain relationships with customers as if we were one family, which is O2O Offline To Online and Online To Offline. But the focus is on analyzing the data. In Bangkok, I can separate how many customers each district has, divided into Bangkok zones: North, South, East, West, Inner Zone, Provincial Zone, we know everything. Therefore, any content that is played by people in Bangkok, we can be specific.

How are the proportion of customers coming in from different channels divided, Mr. Golf?

: Now, 50% of customers refer to us, so we have a base of old customers who come to use the service every year and we have quite a few customers recommending it to others. For example, during the COVID-19 outbreak, were we affected? Yes, we were. In April, we were affected 80% because we couldn't hold the event. More than 300 customers booked and had to postpone it. However, our frozen ready-to-eat food products sold well. Mr.Chon Another brand that was separated out is green curry sauce, massaman sauce, which can be eaten with Korean fried chicken. It also helps our blood to flow slowly, and there is income during COVID-19, which came from me organizing the data well, so I have products and services to offer to our customers. And then, when people started to come back, we started to have quite a few customers come back because we had old data, so we could move forward. During the COVID-19 outbreak, how much has Boonnumpa been affected? How has it adapted? Mr. Golf : Since we have quite a few employees, our employees have turned to delivery, which gives them delivery income, which reduces transportation costs from using many companies. When asked if we use them, we use the Big Four for delivery services, but we try to let our employees deliver as much as possible because it will save us a lot of transportation costs. At that time, during COVID-19, food delivery services and ready-to-eat food were already being delivered. But since we have quite a bit of customer data, we have turned our team into a service to spray disinfectant at customers’ homes or offices at a price that we can afford, so that we can generate cash flow. We will adjust like this.

In the era New Normal How have you adjusted your business plan, Mr. Golf?

: First, adjust the strategy in terms of expansion to be a little slower. Do not invest in anything that requires a lot of money. We will continue to expand things that do not need to be expanded first in order to preserve cash because we do not know if there will be a second or third wave. Also, adjust the package format. Catering services may be box sets for customers to take home. There should be protective equipment and spray barriers between monks and laity. As for food, we will look at additional channels.

Selling food without a storefront or a Ghost Kitchen but don't want to pay for GP Delivery, do you have any advice on how to survive, Mr. Golf?

: I think selling things online without a storefront is not easy for people to buy from us. Mostly, during the COVID-19 period, many people who turned to selling food online and delivering it, most of the buyers were friends and relatives first. They knew us so they bought to support us. If not this group, what groups do we need to add? Just boosting posts won't do. There are many components. What kind of marketing? What are the stimuli that make people interested in buying from us? What are the factors? Does what we do meet the needs of customers? Where are these customers? Then gradually focus on them. Especially for food delivery, I think that wherever we are, the customers are no more than 5 kilometers away. There should be fewer customers further away. What types of people are in these 5 kilometers? Let's analyze the customers in terms of marketing and then sit down and break down the issues one by one. Otherwise, we will waste money on boosting posts without getting anything in return.

For restaurant owners who want to expand their catering business, how should they start? Mr. Golf

: The catering market is highly competitive. If you already have a restaurant, you will need to look at kitchen management. Normally, you make a la carte, dish by dish, and we are going to serve 100 people. It doesn't increase to 100 dishes. The ingredients don't increase 10 times, but it's a matter of proportion. If you don't have a recipe or data, you have to experiment first. You have to balance the people well. How many staff members do you need to do this? Therefore, the most important thing is to study the information first.

What factors will lead to business success, Mr. Golf?

: A successful business requires honesty and sincerity in providing services to customers. Honesty means telling customers directly what we can and cannot do. Don't be greedy, hoping to get money when we can't do it. Whatever I can or can't do, I will tell them directly. For example, if there is not enough time, I will tell the customer that I can't do it. As for sincerity, it means speaking directly. Both of these points can be applied to employees as well.

I would like to send my encouragement to food business operators, Mr. Golf.

: I give importance to three parts in doing business: One - people, Two - time, and Three - capital. If you have all three parts, the business should be able to survive. Some people have people and time but no capital, so they can't do it. They have to find sources of capital, such as a bank loan or a partner. As for time, it means dedicating it, thinking and doing. If you have both, then find someone who is experienced to help push and keep going. I think that if you give importance to these three things and have a strong mind, fighting with it, no matter what the New Normal or any era, we will get through it.